Curriculum

Curriculum Intent

 At Riverbridge Primary School, our curriculum enriches and enhances the EYFS framework and National Curriculum 2014 and is designed to provide opportunities for quality learning and assessment to take place throughout the whole school day.  We offer a broad, balanced curriculum, ensuring a balance of knowledge (schema) and skills through our spiral-based approach to learning.

 

We believe a carefully crafted and tailored curriculum engages and inspires children to achieve in life and fulfil their potential. This is underpinned within our school vision:

Building a firm foundation that inspires every child to aim high

and exceed their own expectations on their journey to successful adulthood.

We believe children learn best when they are interested, engaged and love learning. We strive for a curriculum that motivates children and enables the development of deep and effective learning. 

Our school motto is:

Our curriculum intent is that our curriculum will enable children to Be their Best through the 8 Great Ways of Being our Best:

 

We are:

Active
At Riverbridge, we are active learners.  We can be active physically, emotionally and mentally to promote our health and wellbeing and our growing minds.

Ambitious
We are ambitious for every child.  Our curriculum is carefully designed to help children to make progress and we have high expectations for all.  This helps our children to aspire to meet our school vision.

Compassionate
Riverbridge Primary School has a clear sense of community.  We care about one another and this is part of our Behaviour Policy and Stay on Green approach that is underpinned by our relationships.  We aspire to show unconditional positive regard and believe it is essential to ‘Being our Best’. 

Connectors
Our curriculum provides pupils with the transferable knowledge that is needed for subsequent learning.  We help one another to build connections in our thoughts and activities.  Whilst we teach discrete subjects, we design opportunities to make links and connections to help build firm foundations                                for the future.

Explorers
We develop each pupil’s sense of curiosity and enable them to explore. Our school environment and extra-curricular activities help foster imagination and wonder.  We design regular opportunities for outdoor, experiential learning, making use of the excellent spaces at school.  Some of the spaces                                we explore include our Library, Sensory garden and The Grove.

Inclusive      
At Riverbridge, all pupils access our curriculum.  We give careful consideration to every child and teach about diversity and inclusion.  We use high quality resources and assemblies across a range of subjects to ensure that nobody is discriminated against.  We endeavour to know our pupils’                                      backgrounds and starting points to help with our short, medium and long                                  term planning.          

Independent
Pupils are taught independence from the time they begin at Riverbridge Primary School, whenever they may join us. It is encouraged in our Nursery through to Year 6.  We regularly check what our pupils know and can do through formal and informal assessment.

Thinkers

Children and staff work independently and collaboratively to develop thinking skills across all discrete curriculum subjects and in our wider curriculum.  Our curriculum is designed with a spiral-based approach in         mind to build upon concepts and ideas, including reflecting on prior learning.  Children are taught metacognitive skills: we teach children to regulate their emotions and grow their thinking mind.  Our environment reflects how we teach children to be thinkers; we use a ‘Growth Mindset’ approach to enable our children to ‘Be Our Best’.

 

Our Non-Negotiables:

We use 5 specific approaches to motivate and meet the needs of our children:

1. Enquiry-based learning (knowledge and skills): Our planned learning encourages the development of the children's enquiring minds. We use effective questioning that is generated to challenge children's thinking and develop key skills across all areas of the curriculum, through a balance of subject knowledge and subject-specific skills.

2. Communication rich classrooms: This provides valuable opportunities for children to practise their skills of vocalising before writing. Oracy skills are taught and used regularly across the curriculum to support children in being confident communicators.

3. The use of high quality resources: We use a variety of high quality texts, resources and subject specific schemes (including CLPE's The Power of Reading, EdShed, White Rose Maths Hub, Third Space Learning, Jigsaw etc.) to enhance the learning opportunities for the children and develop skills in all areas of the curriculum.

4. Developing independence, meta-cognition and positive wellbeing: We believe that aptitude can be developed and progress made by all our pupils (embracing a Growth Mindset). We notice, name and encourage deep learning through reference to The Learning Pit. In order for our children to be in an optimal state for a task, we teach pupils to self-regulate emotions by using the told of Zones of Regulation. The four zones that describe how our brains and bodies feel are: Slow - Blue zone, Good to go - Green zone, 
Slow down - Yellow zone; and Stop - Red zone. We work hard to develop the positive wellbeing of children.

5. Embrace diversity and inclusivity: Learning is tailored to the needs of individuals through adaptive teaching. A range of resources are used, including adults in the classroom, to ensure children can meet their full potential. Our broad and balanced curriculum reflects the diversity of our community. External support and agencies are also used to ensure children are supported in the best way possible. 

Our compulsory start and end times for the school day are as follows: